said. “I’ve been working really hard on my lessons, and I want to practice.”
If it had been anyone else who answered, I wouldn’t have tried that, but Celeste and I had formed a friendship over the years since the sister company started. She was the one who’d encouraged me to learn French. This way I would be able to more effectively communicate with our Paris office.
It hadn’t been long since I started taking the lessons, so the practice was valuable.
Once I had the meetings, conference calls, and online webinars put into place, I got off the phone with Celeste. She said something to me in French, wished me luck on my lessons, and we said we would speak soon.
After our conversation was done, I switched my focus to local vendors and clients. There was another list of arrangements that needed to be made that would fill out Tom’s calendar for the next several weeks. Sometimes it could get overwhelming trying to juggle the sheer volume of demands on his time. It was a good thing that I was ultra-organized.
When I’d first started working for Tom, he was a mess. I would never say that to his face. Or, maybe I would, but I would make sure he thought I was teasing him. He was completely unorganized and had no idea how to keep himself on track.
I later found out this was his first company. Rather than being like so many others and starting out business ventures very small and gradually building them, he had jumped right into what turned out to be a tremendous success. He was still climbing that ladder, but the only way he was going to get anywhere was if he didn’t miss all of his appointments and drown in his paperwork first.
That was where I came in. I made sure his calendar was kept up-to-date and organized so he knew what he was supposed to be doing and when. I kept his day structured. I even took on the role of being his companion for lunch and listen to his ideas and plans like I had the day before.
I hesitated to go so far as to say he and I were friends. If I convinced myself that we were friends, it would break down the professionalism between us, and I didn’t want to do that. It would blur lines I couldn’t allow to be blurred. This job meant the world to me, and I wasn’t going to do anything that could even come close to risking it.
He was kind and polite to me. He recognized my hard work and was appreciative of everything I did for him. Yet, we also had a comfortable rapport that let us talk and have fun together when we weren’t working.
I had no intention of us ever stepping outside of that professional bubble. I wasn’t going to be inviting him out to do karaoke with me over a few beers or anything. But it was nice being comfortable at work and enjoying what I did.
And one of the most important things I did was create a to-do list for him every day. Separate from his calendar that kept track of his meetings, conferences, and other obligations, this list broke down his day into all the individual tasks he needed to do to stay on track.
At first, it felt inappropriate to try to manage his disarray. He didn’t hire me to be his life coach or his handler. I was his secretary, but I couldn’t stand seeing how inefficient he was and listening to him get flustered over things he forgot to do.
Hence, the daily to-do list was born. He went from being all over the place to staying focused, and the difference was noticeable immediately. After that, the list was there to stay.
I had already breezed through the better part of my morning tasks when my colleagues started to arrive. Tom strolled into the office at exactly nine as he did every day.
After giving him a few minutes to settle into his office, I grabbed my tablet, his day planner, and a pen and headed in. I rapped my knuckles on his partially open door before peeking inside.
“Good morning,” I said.
“Good morning, Amanda,” he replied. “Come on in.”
I updated him on the Paris team and showed him all the meetings that I’d set up. They were recorded both on the shared, mutually accessible calendar on my tablet, as well as actually written down in his day planner. As much as I